Jesse R. - Entry #20
Hello and thank you for this opportunity to receive some help. I’ve been reefing for about 5 years now. I have a 17 gallon nano tank and a smaller 5 gallon. I started with the 5 gallon so that is the older one. I loved looking at my corals, so much so that my son started and Instagram story called “my dad watching fish”. In that tank I had a frogspawn, gsp, different Zoas, a cleaner shrimp and hermit crab. My little 6 year old girl Giselle loved that tank and would clean the glass for me. In the 17 gallon, I actually made the backdrop out of foam and sand. I designed the rear compartments and even incorporated an automatic fleece roller. Now I am no expert or designer or anything like that but I am a do it your self guy, lol. Anyway what i am trying to say is that i got hooked with the smaller tank and wanted something nicer but really can’t afford buying ready made so i tried to do it myself. A lot of the corals in the 17 gallon I bought locally from a fellow Reefer that helped me out. So I spent a lot of time on that so I was very sad when all of this happened to us reefers here in Texas. I live in Universal City, Texas which is close to San Antonio. During this ice storm we didn’t have electricity for 3 days. Thankfully I was able to use my gas stove to heat my house. Also, I used a camping propane stove to try to heat my tank. Unfortunately I only had one, so I choose to focus on the bigger tank which had more livestock and more volume so I thought it had a better chance of making it. I also used a battery powered camping shower pump to create flow a few hours a day, but the D size batteries did not last too long. So I hunted down as many battery packs as I could but that’s a different story, lol. The ice cold temps also busted my water heater. I lost everything in the small tank. In the 17 gallon, I have lost fish (2 clowns, 1 blue mandarin, 1 purple fire fish, 1 chalk bass, pygmy hawk, 1 royal gramma), a cleaner shrimp and some coral (black light torch, zoas, montis, a clam). Here are some pictures of my tank. Sorry I don’t have pictures of everything but i have some closeup pictures of my corals from before. I don’t have pics of my dead fish because i really didn’t want to take pictures of that sadness and didn’t think I would need them. But I really do appreciate the super kind support I have been seeing on social media for Texas reefers. Please include me in the relief effort. It was a sad experience to say the least. If we where to win this prize, it would help to fade a bad memory with a great one. I know that it would fill my family’s heart with joy. My daughter and I thank you.
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